Leading with purpose

By John Croll

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I think it’s fair to say that with Truescope, I’m embarking on my most ambitious project to date. I’ve been in the media intelligence industry for a long time, and I feel like I have a pretty good handle on what clients expect from a media intelligence partner – typically summed up as timely access to comprehensive and relevant information on an intuitive platform.

But more than two decades on, I couldn’t shake the feeling that media intelligence services hadn’t really evolved as much as they had the potential to, and there was still a lot more that could be delivered to communicators to take advantage of emerging technology.

When I made contact with former colleague, and one of the smartest tech minds I know, Michael Bade, we were immediately on the same page in thinking that a new market entry would need to deliver to, firstly, listen to today’s expectations of what clients expect a media intelligence platform to be, and secondly, enable access to services and data they might not have thought possible.

It was clear that together we were well placed to develop a purpose-led business with a single-minded vision focussed on technology and people.

So Truescope’s purpose has been crystal clear from day one, “to better inform communications’, achieved by having the smartest people and the smartest technology. From the very start we’ve been fortunate not to be bound by legacy systems or legacy people and thinking - building a business during a pandemic has certainly had its challenges but we’ve also been provided with the unique opportunity to ensure we do things in a way that is uniquely ours.

On the people side of things, we don’t waver when it comes to only employing great people; and not just the smartest people but people who want to push boundaries and who dare to do things differently. We seek out people with unique skills who thrive in a team environment, who love what they do, take pride in their work, and who get excited about what we’re delivering to clients. We are attracted to the standout talent who love to look beyond what’s in front of them to provide new solutions, and who feel proud and fulfilled when their ideas and contributions come to life in the Truescope platform.

We now have a team of 30 across Australia, New Zealand and Singapore, representing several different languages and cultures, all of whom are dedicated to working differently - be that remotely, or in a more agile way with our processes. We’re able to say to our people, “just because we did it that way, doesn’t mean we have to continue to do it that way”, we discourage that kind of thinking and hope that we lead our people to challenge the status quo and find alternative approaches that will deliver greater results. The team is absolutely inspired to do things differently to better inform communications and I believe it has been the key to our success in the market to date.

We are also unwavering in our ‘no dickhead’ policy and approach to recruitment. I’ve worked with my fair share of them over the years and it’s pretty great to be in a position to be able to say “no thanks” to anyone who doesn’t align with our values and our culture. We’ve built an environment for people who are willing to work collaboratively, support each other, share successes and respect regions and roles in order to achieve growth and the best outcomes.

With great people in place all actively working towards a common purpose and a very clear product vision that’s at the core of every decision we make, we’ve developed a product that is able to deliver on that purpose - an integrated, cloud-based media insights platform with technology architecture that means we can build new features, quickly, and reliably deliver them every month. By doing so, we’re already building trust with our clients and increasing our market share.

We’re focussing on AI and taking it as far as we possibly can, and we’re working hard to keep up with the growing innovation pipeline. Some of the challenge certainly lies in deciding which to develop first, so we’re constantly looping back to ask ourselves; How can we make our clients’ lives easier? How can we provide them with that competitive advantage in their industry? How can we inform them in a better way?

We’re ready and set to shake up the industry by providing information and insights that will really transform the way our clients receive and use their information, to better inform communications. That’s our purpose and we’re loving every minute of making it happen.